


Threads of an Old Life

by Lothlaurien



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 10:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24968554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lothlaurien/pseuds/Lothlaurien
Summary: How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, after their return to the Shire. Character sketch, focusing on how some of those closest to them might have seen them change.
Relationships: Diamond Took/Pippin Took, Frodo Baggins & Merry Brandybuck & Sam Gamgee & Pippin Took
Kudos: 21





	Threads of an Old Life

They came back changed. Everyone said so.

* * *

It was most obvious with Frodo. The eager, bright-eyed lad who had tramped about the Shire with ‘Mad Baggins’ was gone. Farmer Maggot, when he saw him, could barely connect the thin, sombre figure with the scamp who had stolen his mushrooms. “It ain’t right,” he muttered often enough.

Frodo had often seemed to carry some of Bilbo’s strangeness with him, but now it was more pronounced. These days he rarely frequented the Green Dragon of an evening and when he did he was invariably quiet, staring off into space or into the fire like he was contemplating things the rest of them couldn’t even imagine. He seemed to draw more into himself as time went on, more ghost than living, breathing hobbit. From his comfortable new hole in New Row Gaffer Gamgee would sometimes hear him scream in his sleep.

It wasn’t constant. There were times when Rosie would place baby Elanor on his knee, or Pippin would make some dreadful joke, and he would smile. Then he would almost seem to come back himself for a while. The simple truth, however, was that none of these snatches of happiness ever lasted. When he vanished from the Shire for a second time, with no more warning than the first time, very few were surprised.

* * *

The change in Merry Brandybuck was just as easy to see, but whereas Frodo seemed to have shrunken into himself Merry had grown. His new height was part of it (and how he and Pippin set the lasses twittering when they rode out in their mail-coats like something out of an old tale) but it went beyond that. Larger than life, it hurt to look at them.

He had always been the one with the plan. He had led the conspiracy to find out about the ring and after the Battle of Bywater folk, especially in Buckland, looked to him as a leader in the rebuilding. Elders at Brandy Hall who had once scolded him for mischief now took careful notice of what he said. Mr. Merry’s opinion was sought on everything.

Oh, he still laughed just as easily as ever he had. But there was a thoughtfulness about him now that hadn’t been there before. A kind of wisdom. On quiet evenings at the hall (not that there were ever many of those) Saradoc Brandybuck sometimes looked at his son, sitting with his pipe balanced between his lips in front of the fire, and felt unaccountably young and inexperienced. What was he remembering that made his brows draw into such a tight line? Why did he sometimes clutch his right arm, as if it had gone numb and he was trying to rub the life back into it?

Countless times he almost asked. Countless times he failed to find the right words.

* * *

With Pippin Took the change was more subtle. On the surface, once you got past the astonishing increase in height, he seemed very much like the careless, irrepressible lad who had left. He still teased his older sisters. He still charmed pastries from the cooks at the Great Smials. He still spent much of his time at Merry’s elbow, sampling ales from taverns across the four farthings and striking up conversations with all and sundry. 

Looking at his apple cheeks and wide, curious eyes, Diamond Took found it hard to imagine him in the company of warriors. Or at the head of a band of Tookland villagers, scattering ruffians like leaves in a stiff autumn breeze. He had that coat of mail, of course. He had slain a troll, if his friends were to be believed (and plenty didn’t believe them, Ted Sandyman chief among them). Yet in so many ways he was still the lad who had pulled her pigtails and taken her scrumping for apples in the orchard. She couldn’t reconcile the two.

There were two Pippins. One she felt she knew. The other she didn’t, not at all.

At first he would only talk about the grandness of the places he had seen, revelling in her rapt attention. He had a way of describing them that made her wish she had seen them herself. She was, after all, a direct descendent of Bandobras the Bullroarer.

The picture became clearer over time, as he revealed less pleasant details. Why he had chosen to reveal them to her Diamond couldn’t guess. The only ones who could fully understand, she suspected, were those who had gone with him. Still, by the time she’d heard all of it her heart was no longer her own. 

He had grown up. But she hoped he hadn’t grown beyond her.

* * *

Out of all of them it was Sam Gamgee who seemed to slot back most easily into his old life. He didn’t wear outlandish reminders of his adventures like Merry and Pippin, and he wasn’t quiet and subdued like Frodo. He had neither grown noticeably, nor shrunken. He still worked in the garden and he still looked after the Gaffer, much as he always had done.

Hamson Gamgee had never been all that close to his youngest brother. There were fifteen years between them, and he had gone off to work with uncle Andwise in Tighfield when Sam was only a child. Still, they had a longstanding arrangement of meeting up for a pint of ale every month or so and he was eager to resume it. In his heart of hearts, he had not expected him to return and he had already begun to grieve.

The first time they resumed the tradition after the Battle of Bywater, young Ham (as he had always been known) scrutinised his brother for any signs of change. There had to be some, he reasoned. A year was a long time to be away. At first though he couldn’t find any. Sam settled into his chair, looking as comfortable as ever he had in his old shirt and waistcoat. They talked, haltingly at first, before they became drawn into a larger group.

As the evening drew on Ham found what he was looking for. He didn’t catch the exact words but he saw the flash of fire in Sam’s brown eyes when Ted Sandyman made some sneering comment. Shocked, he leant back in his chair. Sam was the gentle, reliable one. He had never seen his brother so riled up.

Sandyman glowered back, but after a moment he subsided without a word and that was perhaps the most surprising thing of all. Eyebrow raised, Ham looked at his brother with a new respect.

* * *

They all came back changed.


End file.
